Atheists hope (don't pray) to bring ads to Toronto (G&M)

[Prometheus The Supremo]

It's called a "medephore". Actually, I hear they're quite common actually.

I'm saying, that since we have free thought, we are quite able to change the world for good or for ill. God isn't to blame for the evils of men.

That's one thing I don't get about these Atheist groups that call themselves "Free Thinkers". That seems to imply that religious people are "not free thinkers". Of course they're free-thinkers, they freely think about the existence of God! Just because they disagree with others doesn't mean that they free-thought. That sort of language incites a form of hierarchy, and they sink to the levels of the evangelicals... I'd have more respect for the Richard Dawkins types if they weren't so freaking snobby about their beliefs.

i don't know about that. from childhood, i was taught how to think by religious people/catholic school/catholic church. i wasn't given a choice. i guess you can say i was free to believe in god just like a prisoner is free to walk about the jail yard, but not outside the fence.

A Question to Prometheus:

Do you think that if we all lived in the way that Jesus did, do you think the would would be a better or worse place?

(Going on a limb, I'd think you'd say "a worse place" - if so, why?)

if you take away some of the things he is quoted as saying in the bible, he's not really a bad guy. so if we abandoned the negative aspects of jesus and embrace the positive, the world can be a better place. i'm sure you embrace the positive. but if you take away from the character of jesus, is it still jesus or another person?

 

[Hipster Duck]

if you are an atheist just because of the way religious people act, that's not good enough a reason for me. it took more than church scandals & the actions of religious people to break my faith.

Like me, you may find the concept of reincarnation implausible. Why aren't you reserving your ire for the Hindu faith? Perhaps a part of it is because nobody from the Hindu community reserved airtime on an English-language major broadcaster to spout their beliefs, or maybe because nobody from the Hindu community cornered you on your university campus to invite you to study the Vedas.

I would also not consider people who haven't made up their minds on religion to be weaker of mind. People who sat on the fence, including Einstein, John Milton and Soren Kierkegaard, are hardly idiots and have probably put a lot of thought debating the relative merits of belief over non-belief. They may, in fact, have put in more thought into this matter than you.

how am i turning you away from my "cause"? are you going to be religious or have faith just because you don't like the way i conduct my arguments?

sometimes honesty is brutal. i'm sorry, i can't change that.

Your "cause" is absolute and total non-belief, a position I respect but cannot subscribe to. I am a moderate agnostic leaning towards non-belief but I do not consider my beliefs to be fully formed based on my current knowledge, nor do I expect them to ever be. In either case, I wish that both sides tried their very least to impose their belief systems, and this goes for both religious extremists and total atheists, like Richard Dawkins.

 

[urbanboom]

i don't know about that. from childhood, i was taught how to think by religious people/catholic school/catholic church. i wasn't given a choice. i guess you can say i was free to believe in god just like a prisoner is free to walk about the jail yard, but not outside the fence.

if you take away some of the things he is quoted as saying in the bible, he's not really a bad guy. so if we abandoned the negative aspects of jesus and embrace the positive, the world can be a better place. i'm sure you embrace the positive. but if you take away from the character of jesus, is it still jesus or another person?

The Church and the Bible can tell you anything you want, but that doesn't mean that you have listen. Last time I checked, going to Church was voluatary. If went to a Catholic school when you were younger, that was because your parents/guardians made that decision. According to our laws, your parents had legal right over you until you turned 18. Even so, you still didn't have to believe in what they taught you. You may have been a minority, but you still had the right not to believe.

So we agree that there are many parts of the life and times of Jesus Christ that are admirable. I just question what it is you don't like? I find his thoughts and actions to be inspiring. The "negative" aspects of Christ, as I pointed out before, weren't from the Jesus the man at all. Most of them are from Paul in his letters to the various Churches in the Empire.

 

[Prometheus The Supremo]

The Church and the Bible can tell you anything you want, but that doesn't mean that you have listen. Last time I checked, going to Church was voluatary. If went to a Catholic school when you were younger, that was because your parents/guardians made that decision. According to our laws, your parents had legal right over you until you turned 18. Even so, you still didn't have to believe in what they taught you. You may have been a minority, but you still had the right not to believe.

So we agree that there are many parts of the life and times of Jesus Christ that are admirable. I just question what it is you don't like? I find his thoughts and actions to be inspiring. The "negative" aspects of Christ, as I pointed out before, weren't from the Jesus the man at all. Most of them are from Paul in his letters to the various Churches in the Empire.

no i didn't have the right to believe. i was afraid of burning in hell and/or being denied entrance to heaven when the time comes. how could i be free to believe when pretty much all i ever knew was taught to me from a catholic perspective? heck, they forced us to go to mass at school. i wasn't allowed to stay behind and do something else. also, do you know what it's like to be told that prayer works, then pray for god to help you and not have your prayers answered? you try to find reasons why god didn't answer your prayers, maybe it was because of this or that, then you change your ways and god still doesn't answer your prayers. then you change your ways and god still doesn't help you and you find other things to change about yourself. the next thing you know, you're scared to think a certain way because maybe that's why god isn't answering my prayers. maybe god isn't answering my prayers because i'm not praying enough, etc. it never ends. i even read the entire bible because i believed that god would help me if i did. well, he didn't. i was a slave to superstition.



and nothing in the bible is written from jesus himself. we have brought this point up already. why are things you agree with true and things you disagree with just written in by men?

 

[Prometheus The Supremo]

Like me, you may find the concept of reincarnation implausible. Why aren't you reserving your ire for the Hindu faith? Perhaps a part of it is because nobody from the Hindu community reserved airtime on an English-language major broadcaster to spout their beliefs, or maybe because nobody from the Hindu community cornered you on your university campus to invite you to study the Vedas.

I would also not consider people who haven't made up their minds on religion to be weaker of mind. People who sat on the fence, including Einstein, John Milton and Soren Kierkegaard, are hardly idiots and have probably put a lot of thought debating the relative merits of belief over non-belief. They may, in fact, have put in more thought into this matter than you.



Your "cause" is absolute and total non-belief, a position I respect but cannot subscribe to. I am a moderate agnostic leaning towards non-belief but I do not consider my beliefs to be fully formed based on my current knowledge, nor do I expect them to ever be. In either case, I wish that both sides tried their very least to impose their belief systems, and this goes for both religious extremists and total atheists, like Richard Dawkins.

i don't know much about the hindu faith to criticize it as well as i do christianity. i'm sure if i did try to criticize it, i'd be told that i'd have no right to since i don't know much about it. since we're in a country that's mostly populated by christians and everyone else is subject to those beliefs & i was raised a christian and experienced what can go wrong with such a belief, it makes sense to debate the merits of christianity. maybe if i was born in india, it be criticizing the hindu faith. who knows? besides, unrbanboom and transportfan are not debating about the hindu faith with me are they?

what you are saying is like why are you criticizing this food company for putting peanuts in their food but not the other company for putting milk in theirs. well, for starters, they said it had no peanuts, i trusted them and then i got an allergic reaction and found out there were peanuts in there. i'm advocating for better labels across the whole board. but i have to give my example as an account to why food companies should have better labeling practices. you get it?



and did i say anyone was an idiot for having religious beliefs? i was actually a pretty smart kid in highschool. being religious makes you no more an idiot than charles darwin marrying his first cousin made him an idiot.


and my cause isn't total and absolute non-belief. quit claiming to know what my "cause" is.

 

[Transportfan]

Then one can assume no proof or evidence is forthcoming - merely a display of fantasy and mythology.

No. I'm giving up on you because you because "X"-tian haters would'nt believe anything I say anyways.

Say, has anyone had a look at that weblink I provided?

 

[Prometheus The Supremo]

No. I'm giving up on you because you because "X"-tian haters would'nt believe anything I say anyways.

"Johann Hari: Why should I respect these oppressive religions?

Whenever a religious belief is criticised, its adherents say they're victims of 'prejudice'"

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinio...spect-these-oppressive-religions-1517789.html

 

[Prometheus The Supremo]

here it comes

Toronto church leader denounces atheist 'attack ads'
by Globe and Mail

JEFF GRAY
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
January 29, 2009 at 4:24 AM EST

A prominent evangelical leader says atheist ads suggesting there is no God - now headed for Toronto's transit system - are "attack ads" and should not be approved.

The Toronto-based Freethought Association of Canada won approval yesterday from the Toronto Transit Commission to place ads on buses and inside subway cars that read: "There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

Charles McVety, president of the Canada Family Action Coalition, which fought against the legalization of same-sex marriages, said his group has not decided whether it will formally complain about the ads once they appear.

"On the surface, I'm all for free speech. ... However, though, these are attack ads," Dr. McVety, president of Canada Christian College in Toronto, said in an interview yesterday.

"These ads are not saying what the atheists believe, they are attacking what other people believe," he said. "And if you look at the dictionary definition for ... bigot, that's exactly what it is, to be intolerant of someone else's belief system."

The ads coming to the Toronto transit system are identical to those used in a recent campaign in Britain. After raising more than $26,500 in donations in just a week using a website called atheistbus.ca, the Freethought Association now plans to use the funds to place the ads on buses in Calgary and Halifax.

Katie Kish, the Freethought Association's vice-president, denied the ads are an attack on religion. She argued that they are meant to inspire dialogue.

"It's not meant to be any sort of rude or inflammatory thing toward people," said Ms. Kish, a York University student with a radio program heard on campus stations. "It's meant to grab attention, and then, from that attention, comes discussion. And that's what we want out of it."

She also said the website, which raised much more than the campaign's original $6,000 goal - more than $5,000 rolled in yesterday alone - has also generated its share of hate mail, including two death threats and several warnings that the group is hell bound.

Brad Ross, a spokesman for the Toronto Transit Commission, confirmed yesterday that staff have decided the ads do not violate any of the TTC's rules. But that decision could be reviewed if complaints arise.

"Disallowing the ad may be a violation of the Ontario Human Rights Code and potentially a violation of the Charter ... so we have to look at it from a legal basis," Mr. Ross said. "We don't feel that there's any grounds to disallow the ad."

FREE SPEECH OR BIGOTRY?

Ads similar to these will be found on TTC buses and subway cars:

"It was, of course, a lie, what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I don not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."

Albert Einstein

THERE'S PROBABLY NO GOD.

NOW STOP WORRYING AND ENJOY YOUR LIFE.

"I'm an atheist and that's it. I believe there's nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for other people."

Katherine Hepburn

THERE'S PROBABLY NO GOD.

NOW STOP WORRYING AND ENJOY YOUR LIFE.

"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"

Douglas Adams

THERE'S PROBABLY NO GOD.

NOW STOP WORRYING AND ENJOY YOUR LIFE.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090129.watheist29/BNStory/National/home

 

[khris]

Death threats, hate mail, and hellbound. Gotta love religious people. They're probably not even religious extremists. Just people obsessed with god and religion.

 

[PukeGreen]

I see this as a simple message of solidarity. It's not about "converting" devote Christians, Muslims or Buddhists to become athiests; it's about letting those of us who already know in our hearts that we do not believe in God feel like we can openly admit it. I know many who are non-religious feel somehow ashamed of it, or that they must hide it for fear of offending others: a ridiculous situation in the year 2009, in my opinion.

 

[Hydrogen]

Prometheus, I'm not advocating for the other side, but maybe you should cool it with the excessive use of bible quotes and stuff. You're attacking religion with a scary kind of fervour that I used to think was only capable by secular extremists.

The issue is that for "non-believers" books like the bible are read, analyzed and critiqued as literature. Such an analysis is usually carried out in an attempt to either understand the text more deeply or to expose hidden internal assumptions held by biblical literalists.

What Prometheus is doing has a long tradition going back hundreds of years. Many theologians have questioned and critiqued biblical passages. None of that has ever stopped the fervent believer from reading the bible in whatever manner they wish to.

 

[urbanboom]

Death threats, hate mail

Because of the ads? I didn't see that in the article.

 

[Hydrogen]

No. I'm giving up on you because you because "X"-tian haters would'nt believe anything I say anyways.

Again, you missed it. I don't hate you or Christians.

But if you or any other religious person (from whatever religion) is going to promote the superiority of your beliefs without any evidence for those claims, then I will continue to question and criticize the basis for both the beliefs and the position that they are somehow superior.

 

[Hipster Duck]

The issue is that for "non-believers" books like the bible are read, analyzed and critiqued as literature. Such an analysis is usually carried out in an attempt to either understand the text more deeply or to expose hidden internal assumptions held by biblical literalists.

What Prometheus is doing has a long tradition going back hundreds of years. Many theologians have questioned and critiqued biblical passages. None of that has ever stopped the fervent believer from reading the bible in whatever manner they wish to.

Yeah, okay, but why fight fire with fire? The majority of Christians are not biblical literalists. If he wants to slug it out with fundamentalists by digging obscure quotes out of a book whose authoral origins are in dispute, he can be my guest, but the whole thing smacks of OCD.

Perhaps there isn't a divide between believers and non-believers as there is between moderates and radicals; the difference being that a moderate knows when to let go.

 

[Mot]

Because of the ads? I didn't see that in the article.

"....has also generated its share of hate mail, including two death threats and several warnings that the group is hell bound."

I think you missed that part of the article.